Awarded Projects of Third ANR-NRF Joint Grant Call

The third ANR-NRF Joint Grant Call, with a focus on materials applied to specific societal challenges, was launched in September 2016. 43 full proposals were received when the call closed in April 2017.

Following evaluation by a joint evaluation panel from ANR and NRF, the following projects were awarded.

Chiral plasmonic structure has the ability to produce super-chiral electromagnetic fields, which can be used to control valley polarization inside the transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). Project 2D-CHIRAL seeks to study the coupling between chiral plasmonics and valley polarized emission of the TMDs, including the hybridized sample fabrication and optical characterization. This aims to develop compact and efficient sources of chiral light based on the coupling of chiral plasmonics nanostructures and a single layer of TMDs. Professor Qihua Xiong from Division of Physics and Applied Physics, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and assistant professor Davy Gérard from University of Technology of Troyes (UTT) are the coordinating partners for this project.

The GaNGUN project addresses the bottleneck of Terahertz Science and Technology where the prime challenge is the fabrication of room temperature, continuous wave, compact, tunable and powerful sources. Solid-state emitters and detectors at THz frequencies will be developed in this study by exploring the attractive properties of Gallium Nitride semiconductor and the advantages of novel device architecture such as self-switch diode to meet this challenge. At the conclusion of the project, a simple THz emission/ detection subsystem for telecommunication applications will be demonstrated. The coordinating partners for this project are Associate Professor K Radhakrishnan from the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (in collaboration with CINTRA) at Nanyang Technological University and Professor Gaquiere Christophe from IEMN/University of Lille 1, France.

3. Precisely controlled nanomaterials to catalyse the transformation of CO2 into fuels and platform molecules (PRECINANOMAT)

The project PRECINANOMAT aims to develop nanomaterials constituted of precisely controlled and supported metal nanoparticles (NPs) to assess their catalytic performance toward the production of fuels and platform molecules from CO2. This project targets to bring novelty and breakthroughs by providing efficient catalytic materials for the valorization of CO2 and thus contribute to answering the future needs in energy and value-added chemicals. Assistant Professor Yan Ning from Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, National University of Singapore (NUS) and Senior Researcher Karine Philippot from CNRS-LCC Toulouse are partnering to work on this project.

Project 2DPS seeks to develop a plasmonic sensor based on optimized 2D nanostructures in order to achieve ultra-high sensitivity for hard-to-identify small molecules. This can be achieved by studying the new physics on the plasmonic and magneto-plasmonic effects generated by the coupling between 2D nanomaterials and gold metasurfaces. The aim is to miniaturize the plasmonic sensor for commercial applications. Associate Professor Yong Ken Tye from the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (in collaboration with CINTRA), College of Engineering, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and Dr. Nicolas Tiercelin of CNRS are the coordinating partners for this project.

5. Validation of near-future quantum technologies (VanQuTe)

Technologies that exploit quantum mechanics at a fundamental level are set to bring about major advances in metrology, communications security and computation. The VanQuTe project aims to develop verification and validation techniques for these emerging technologies, focusing on near term devices. The project combines the expertise of groups across Singapore (J. Fitzsimons at SUTD, R. Jain at NUS and M. Gu at NTU) and France (D. Markham, E. Diamanti and E. Kashefi at LIP6 and S. Perdrix and E. Jeandel at LORIA) in both theoretical and experimental quantum information processing.